Still Doll
by Shadow Of Grace
Summary: "Sasori, what have you done now. . ." the older woman thought sadly, watching the winds sweep through the sandy streets as the golden-haired girl put a protective hand over her stomach, housing the soon-to-be-born child of an S-Class Missing Nin.
1. Prologue

**A/N:**

**Grace: *sigh* I feel a little guilty for making ANOTHER story when I really do have others I should be updating. . . but I was watching an AMV for Sasori no Danna, and then I decided to do some research on him because there really isn't enough revealed in the series about Sasori due to his short screen time. And then a plot bunny was born. Plus, I will admit, I do enjoy giving the characters children, for which I blame my Biology assignment on genetics a while back. Crappy excuse, I know. Well anyway, I should also probably mention that the updates will be pretty slow, roughly one a week give or take, and I fudged the numbers a little on some character's ages, but nothing too substantial. Oh, there will also be a few differences in the Narutoverse, as I've made a habit of doing when I bring in an OC, but only things that the OC would affect, it's not like I'm turning Sakura's hair blue or killing off Sasuke – no matter how much I'd love to.**

**Phantom: Aren't you forgetting someone?**

**Grace: Oh, and as usual my awesome friend PhantomPrussia is being my Beta, dealing with my inability to concentrate, and numerous grammatical errors.**

**Phantom: *Takes bow***

_Still Doll_

_Prologue_

"Chiyo-San, is it true? The rumors around the village?" the young woman sitting opposite Elder Chiyo asked quietly, her voice shaking slightly with emotion. She was clearly not very old, perhaps seventeen, and had long golden-blonde hair that literally gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the window, framing similarly colored eyes.

"It depends on which rumors, Kanari." Chiyo mumbled tiredly, eying the golden-haired girl's stomach, swollen with a child.

"You know what I mean, Chiyo-San. Is . . . is he really gone?" the younger woman questioned as she turned her eyes toward the window, surveying the sandy surroundings of Sunagakure.

"Yes. Tell me, girl, is it his?" it was Elder Chiyo's turn to look emotional as she spoke, gesturing toward the woman – Kanari- 's stomach.

"Of course!" Kanari exclaimed, eyes widening indignantly a moment before softening once more.

"I thought as much." Chiyo whispered tiredly, lowering her head to her hands

"_Sasori, what have you done now. . ." _the older woman thought sadly, watching the winds sweep through the sandy streets as the golden-haired girl put a protective hand over her stomach, housing the soon-to-be-born child of an S-class missing nin.

**A/N:**

**Grace: Yes, I am fully aware that this SUCKS, but I wanted to get a little bit of background in and stuff. Plus I can never resist making a prologue. In case anyone was wondering, Kanari is not the main OC, this is pretty much her only appearance aside from flashbacks. Also, the rest of the chapters will be much, much longer than this, and I'm going to try to get the next one out today. I hope. It really depends on whether or not this interests any of you guys, so please review, even if you're just informing me of how much this sucks. :)**


	2. Chapter one: Sunlight

**A/N:**

**Grace: It occurs to me that I may over use time skips. . . ah well, in this story there should only be this one, plus one more a few chapters away. Maybe.**

**Phantom: Ignore her and read on!**

_Still Doll_

_Chapter one: Sunlight_

_Twelve years later_

Meiwaku.

That was what _she _called me.

I was no fool, I knew what it meant. Sometimes I would just sit in the shade of a building and listen to the people as they went by. Whenever they called for someone, a friend or relative perhaps, the name that rolled off their lips would be something beautiful, flattering. Something the owner of the name could be proud of and smile about when they heard it shouted to them.

But not mine.

Of course not.

No, Chiyo-san named me Meiwaku, a title meaning annoyance, irritation, or bother. That's all I was to her and the village. I knew they were all scared of me, it was more than clear in their faces, but no one would tell me why, and I loathed it. They acted like I'd committed some horrible crime every time they saw my eyes.

Personally, I liked my eyes, and even thought they were pretty, sort of like deep brown pools of chocolate with just the slightest hint of gold. Those little flecks of gold were drawn out by my hair, which was bright golden-blonde as Chiyo-San told me my mother's was, but with slightly red tints toward the tips. I thought it all looked sort of cute with my short build and thin frame. No one else seemed to think so.

My solution was to hide. Hide from their judging, often angry gazes. I always dressed in the same sort of thing, today it was an oversized long-sleeved off-white shirt with the Sunagakure symbol painted on the back, with loose tan pants that came down to my mid-calf, and my face hidden by a faded and slightly worn scarf, leaving just a bit of my eyes visible. I had found the scarf folded neatly on the bed in the room at the end of the hall, the one with the door locked that Chiyo-San never went into and told me quite adamantly to keep away from.

But Chiyo-san didn't know that when she went fishing one day I had snuck into that room. It was almost identical to mine, sandstone walls, circular windows, a bed, and a door to the left of the one I entered through. I still hadn't had a chance to see what was behind that door, since I'd been interrupted by Chiyo-san coming home, so I quickly grabbed the scarf from its place on the bed and ran, just barely remembering to re-lock the door behind me.

With a small sigh I pulled myself from my thoughts and stood from my place in the shadows, making sure the scarf kept my hair and face hidden as I set off down the street. Despite that many of the people of Suna avoided me like the plague, there were still a few with whom I could talk. For instance there was Hajikano-san; he was an elderly ex-Shinobi man who was very kind to me, we often sat together after he closed his fruit stand and discussed current events. There was also Agata-sensei, she was one of the medic-nin in the Suna hospital and often showed me bits of healing jutsu. She also inspired me to begin researching different venoms and poisons after pointing out one of the dying victims of poisoning.

I smiled and waved slightly to Hajikano-san as I passed by his fruit stand and Chiyo-san's house came into sight. Whether Chiyo-san and I were related or not was unknown to me, but I had lived with her ever since my mother died when I was two. Chiyo-san and mother had been very close, at least from the hazy memories that still fluttered about my mind, but Chiyo-san had always been wary of me. One day, when I started playing with the sand and making it float into the air, Chiyo-san seemed to get worried, but mother smiled and hugged me, mumbling about what a good Shinobi I would be some day. When I started playing with my dolls and making them dance without touching them, Chiyo-san and mother had a screaming argument which ended with mother sobbing outside the locked bedroom muttering words I couldn't hear, and Chiyo-san staring out the window with just-visible tears in her eyes.

My nose collided with the sandstone door of Chiyo-san's house, shaking me from my thoughts. I laughed slightly at my clumsiness and pushed the door open, making sure to quickly pull the scarf from my head and tuck it into my bag incase Chiyo-san was inside, but she wasn't. Still, one could never be too careful, and I didn't want her angry at me. Chiyo-san's wrath was a scary, scary thing.

With a small sigh I checked the house to make sure Chiyo-san wasn't home before heading down to the locked room at the end of the hall. I rested my open palm on the wood of the door a moment before sliding a senbon needle from my bag and attempting to pick the lock. When the door swung open – after a good fifteen minutes of arguing animatedly with the door and kicking it several times - , I smiled slightly and took a deep breath, loving the scent of wood lingering in the air.

Suddenly, I began to wonder why there was such a strong scent of wood. The last – and first – time I'd entered the room I hadn't been there for more than a few moments, just long enough to glance around and find the scarf. It was strange, almost as though someone had scattered wood shavings about and let their scent soak into every bit of the room before sweeping them away.

After a few moments of following my nose I realized that the scent was strongest near the door that had intrigued me, but I never had the courage nor the time to open. I ran two fingers over the worn word of the door, noticing with a raised eyebrow that there was a small symbol carved into the door, barely the size of my palm. My face was almost touching the door with how close I was leaning to it in an attempt to read the mark on the surface, but it looked like someone had tried to gouge it out, making it impossible to tell exactly what it once said.

Something felt amiss, but I shrugged the feeling aside and pushed the door open.

**A/N:**

**Grace: Hahahahahaha! I made a cliffie! I've been wanting to do that since forever!**

**Phantom: You're one crazy bitch. . .**

**Grace: Shattup! You're just the Beta.**

**Phantom: Whatever. . . *hides in emo corner***

**Grace: Hey people, review and you get hugs from Sasori!**

**Sasori: What?**


	3. Chapter two: Dolls

**A/N: **

**Grace: Well this took about three months longer than I'd thought it would. . . My apologies to any of my amazing readers who don't hate me enough to stop reading this, but this chapter really was a bitch to write. Not for any particular reason other than my incredible ability to get nothing done, and my habit of getting my ass kicked and ending up in the hospital for extended periods of time. At the moment I've got like five other stories that I really, really have to update, so I can't say when the next chapter of this will be out, but hopefully within a month this time. **

_Still Doll_

_Chapter two: Dolls_

The strong smell of wood was almost overwhelming as I pushed the door open. There was little light to see by, as only one window lit the small room behind the door, but it was enough. I could just make out numerous shapes hanging from racks on the walls; shapes that, at a first glance, I almost mistook for human bodies. Actually, if not for the intensity of the scent of wood I probably would have believed the very, very human-looking shapes were in fact dead bodies. There was a table pushed to the back of the wall closest to the window with small carving tools littered about, along with wood shavings and what looked disturbingly akin to a dismembered arm.

When I stepped further into the room I noticed that there was also a large bookcase full of heavy leather-bound tomes, each coated in a thick layer of dust. There were no titles on any of the books, but when I pulled one off the shelf I noticed that there was a small red symbol, a square turned on its end so it resembled a diamond with what appeared to be a scorpion in the center.

After a bit of exploring I found the scorpion symbol on each of the wooden puppets hung on the walls, and each of the books had it as well. When I finally worked my way over to the table I noticed that there was a single folded piece of paper nearly invisible beneath the carving tools. Raising an eyebrow I grabbed the paper and opened it. Immediately, a small necklace with a thin leather string and a wooden emblem fell from the note, clattering loudly to the ground and breaking the silence of the room. The paper, I noted as I stooped down to grab the necklace, was actually a picture. It was of a man and a woman. They both looked very young, the woman no older than seventeen and the man could hardly be a year older. The woman had long golden-blonde hair swept up into a ponytail , bright golden eyes that I was certain would have sparkled in person, and a wide smile stretched across her beautiful face. While the man didn't have more than a small smirk at best, framed by messy red hair, his own happiness showed in his deep chocolate-brown eyes.

The two looked so over-joyed that I found myself smiling slightly as well. I got an odd feeling that I should have known them, as the woman was hauntingly familiar and I knew I'd seen eyes like the man's before, yet I couldn't seem to place where I'd glanced either of them before. With a small sigh of frustration I scooped the necklace off the floor and shoved it along with the picture into my pocket.

I spent a few minutes glancing through the books; all of them were filled with a small and precise handwriting scrawled quickly across the pages at odd angles, as though someone were in a rush to get their thoughts out. A few of the books listed the names of strange plants that I couldn't even begin to pronounce, while others had sketches and schematics for what looked at a first glance like dolls, but I realized a moment later they were in fact puppets.

Before I could investigate anything further, the tell-tale sound of Chiyo-san throwing the main door open echoed through the house, sending a bolt of fear through my body.

"Meiwaku, what do you think you're doing?"

**A/N:**

**Grace: So, ta-da. I'm not dead yet, and the next chapter will be out. . . eventually. I hope.**

**Phantom: Please review. The obligation of review-begging falls to me since the author is utterly incompetent.**

**Grace: Hey!**


	4. Author's Note

**Grace:**

**Hey everyone.**

**I'd like to start off with an apology for all of my readers. All of you really do mean a lot to me, every single hit on this story makes me smile. The faves and follows never fail to improve my mood, even when I'm having the shittiest of days, and if I could hug every one of you I would. You reviewers, though. . . you guys really are the ones that inspire me to get off my procrastinating and incredibly lazy ass to get some writing done, and every single one literally makes me dance around like a lunatic; my cousins must think I need to be locked up at this point.**

**Unfortunately, life is a bitch – as I'm sure you all know. After dealing with some rather severe bullying problems and more than one hospital visit, I've ended up moving. Now I'm in a different state entirely, and though things are quite a bit easier for me now, I'm still dealing with physical and mental after effects. Now, please note that I am ****NOT ****fishing for sympathy, I haven't a doubt in my mind that I can't even begin to fathom the troubles that other people have. At this point I simply feel obligated to my amazing readers to explain why the hell it's taking me so long to update.**

**Now that I'm finally getting settled properly and on the road to a decent recovery, I'd like to pick up my writing again. After reading through my assorted stories, I was left utterly disgusted by the all-round quality – or lack thereof – of nearly every chapter. Frankly, I'm rather surprised that no one has pointed out the shoddiness of my writing yet. **

**More to the point, I've decided to do a full re-write of every story. Needless to say, this is no small undertaking, especially with the nearly two dozen other fanfics that I haven't quite gotten around to posting. In order to make everything a bit easier for me, I've made an entirely new account. All re-written fics will be uploaded as I get to them, and I promise that each and every story I've published thus far WILL be gotten to eventually, though I can't say quite when. A link for my new account (Pen name Forsaken Paradise) can be found on my profile.**

**Again, I would like to thank each of my readers, favoriters, followers, and reviewers. All of you really have brought a bit of sunshine to my day – ironic given that it's storming at the moment – and I wish I could thank each of you individually, but unfortunately typing isn't very easy for me at the moment. Please do keep an eye out for the new version of this story, and I'll probably post a quick notice on here when I upload the fixed version. At the risk of being repetitive, thank you all for your support of my writing up to this point, and I hope to hear from you guys again. **

**Lots of love,**

**Grace.**


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